


trade in these wings on some wheels

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-21
Updated: 2011-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nice boys don't ride motorcycles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trade in these wings on some wheels

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily influenced by [this picture of Novak with a motorbike](http://aramley.tumblr.com/post/6067370356/a-dream-i-didnt-know-i-had-come-true). You're welcome.

It takes just about every scrap of money from every weekend job and babysitting gig he's ever had, but there she is, dusty black and rusted metal on the driveway.

"She'll never run," Novak's father tells him, but Novak just shrugs. When he puts a hand on the battered old fuel tank he can feel promise under her skin.

"Can I ride?" Djole asks, entranced, and their father says _No_ , straightaway, but Novak winks at him behind his back and Djole grins, lit up with their secret.

-

Novak wipes oil from his hands with a dirty rag and says, "Well, what do you think?"

From his perch on the tool-bench Rafa looks over the half-finished motorcycle, which at this stage looks like nothing so much as the exoskeleton of some strange and incomplete beetle. "It looks," he starts, and kicks his heels absently in air for a few moments while he searches, and finds, "like a lot of work."

"Okay, I know she looks like shit now," says Novak, "but you wait. Marian says he found a supplier for the engine, and Janko's going to help me respray her body."

"She? Her?" Rafa teases, and Novak throws the oily rag at him and tells him to go fuck himself. Of course it's _she_.

-

After that, Novak kicks Rafa out and tells him that he's not allowed to see _her_ until _she's_ finished, because clearly he doesn't appreciate beauty unless it's flaunting itself at him.

"You know, Roger Federer never had a motorbike," Novak says, over lunch one day, ignoring the way that all their friends roll their eyes because they're so sick of hearing about Novak's damn bike, seriously, it's been months and he should just take it to the shop already.

Rafa laughs. It's an old joke; Roger Federer, high school superstar, left for college years ago and comes back now for Christmas and Thanksgiving like an emissary from the foreign country of adulthood with his business suits and his Prom Queen college fiancee, the two of them together like something straight out of a magazine, but he lives on between Rafa and Novak as the byword for _perfect_.

"Roger Federer's a nice boy," Rafa says.

"I'm a nice boy," Novak protests.

"You have a motorcycle," says Rafa. "Nice boys don't ride motorcycles."

Novak rolls his eyes. "What am I, then?"

"You have oil on your face," Rafa says, like that's an answer.

-

In June, school turfs them out for good, clutching their diplomas and their college acceptance letters like talismans for the long golden stretch of summer before the shock of college. Novak locks himself in the garage for two weeks and ignores all calls and invitations, even Rafa's, feeling like Victor Frankenstein in his mania of creation, except that it's not a monster that he's bringing slowly to life, but something _awesome_.

And two weeks after school he wheels her out onto the driveway, glossy in black and chrome, beautiful in a way that makes his blood sing. She kicks to life under him, voraciously loud, hungry for the road. Possibilities spool out from her in every direction, and Novak grins, butterflies in his stomach, thrilled with the smell of petrol and asphalt. He loves her already, fiercely - feels like he could go around the world and back on her.

Before that, though, they have somewhere they need to be.

-

Rafa works as a busboy in the dinky, retro diner his family runs in town, and when Novak pulls up outside he's absorbed in wiping down empty tables, ridiculous in his 50s style uniform. Novak sits out front and revvs the engine until Rafa looks up, catches sight of him, and starts to laugh. He calls something over his shoulder to Fernando behind the counter, who rolls his eyes, but Rafa's already shouldering through the front door. Novak gives the engine another growling rev.

"She runs," Rafa says. He swings the rag over his shoulder and gives the motorbike a long, admiring look.

"Of course she runs," says Novak. "What, you doubted me?"

"She looks good," Rafa says, evading the question.

"She's beautiful," Novak says, because she is. "Come on - help me break her in."

Rafa laughs. "I'm working."

"Ditch it," says Novak. He pats the space on the bike behind him, and he can see the temptation in Rafa's eyes.

"I can't, you know Toni will kill me," Rafa says.

"Toni can kill _me_ ," says Novak.

Rafa wavers, poised on the edge of acceptance, but he shakes his head. "My shift is over in an hour. Pick me up then."

Novak groans. "You're such a _good boy_." He kills the engine with a sigh, pocketing the keys.

Rafa frowns. "What are you doing?"

"I can wait an hour," Novak says, something sweet blooming in him when Rafa smiles like that, looks so shyly pleased.

"I'll get you a milkshake," Rafa promises.

"You'd better," says Novak.

-

They go everywhere that summer, through honey-gold days under endlessly blue skies. They ride to a diner three hours over because Rafa heard that they had the best chocolate pie in the state, don't tell Toni, but that's what he heard, even though Rafa's on a full-ride sports scholarship and is supposed to be on some kind of training programme instituted by Toni so really, _don't tell Toni_. The pie's pretty good, maybe Novak wouldn't ride three hours to get it but the pie's not the point, in the end.

It's on one of these excursions they find the jacket, stiff new leather hidden away between worn-in denim shirts in the back row of a thrift store. It's Rafa who excavates it from the rack, and forces Novak to try it on.

"You're worse than Ana," Novak complains, shrugging into the jacket anyway, because Rafa is irresistible.

"It goes with the bike," Rafa says, with all the certainty of absolute and unarguable truth.

And somehow before Novak knows it the jacket is his, and he's walking out of the store lighter in the pocket and shaking his head a little because this is so ridiculous. It's too hot for any kind of jacket, let alone heavy leather, the sun bright even behind his wayfarers.

"You look like James Dean," Rafa tells him, watching from the sidewalk as Novak swings over to straddle the bike.

Novak laughs. "You look like Marilyn Monroe," he tells Rafa, and Rafa laughs and swats at him, hand slapping against the new leather. Novak grins back, so happy he thinks his heart could burst, right here.

"You can be Marlon Brando, if you want," he concedes, magnanimous. There is something a little Brando about Rafa right then, some old-fashioned quality brought out by the retro uniform and his hair slicked back for work because Novak dropped by right as his shift ended to kidnap him. Novak kicks the engine to life and feels like James Dean, like a fucking superstar, his heart soaring to the bike's harsh, beautiful voice.

"Come on, Marlon Brando," he says. "Let's roll."

-

The jacket breaks in to sit comfortably across his shoulders, stops smelling like the store and starts smelling like the sun and sweat and road dust, faintly of smoke from cookouts and bonfires, of his cologne and Rafa's too from all the time they spend on the bike with Rafa pressed up warm behind him, and Novak thinks that for the rest of his life he'll never be able to smell worn leather without reliving all the perfect moments of this summer.

Not surprisingly, he's okay with that.

-

In August, Novak kisses Rafa for the first time, tucked away on the side of a quiet country road, the soft tick-tick of the bike's cooling metal behind them. Rafa is windswept and and suntanned and perfect, and suddenly it seems harder to keep on not kissing him that it would be to just do it: so Novak does. Rafa tastes like summer and he smiles into the kiss, kisses back like all the things Novak ever dared to dream about and all the things he never dared to hope for. Novak slings an arm around his shoulders like a scene from some teenage summer romance movie and Rafa slides his hands up underneath the leather jacket, palms hot through the thin cotton t-shirt. When they ride home together in the purpling sunset haze Rafa tucks his arms a little tighter than usual around Novak's waist, and lets his cheek rest against Novak's shoulder, and Novak takes the ride a little slower because he never wants it to end.

-

But summers end as surely as they start, sliding into a redder gold at the far edges of fall, and when they ride out now Novak thinks about how many times they have left to do this, how it'll never be enough. It's hard to think about anything when he's kissing Rafa, but he can't help the sense of all the time he wasted, all those missed opportunities.

Rafa whispers, "I'm not going anywhere," against Novak's mouth or against the nape of his neck if they're on the bike, so low under the wind whipping past them that Novak isn't sure whether he's even meant to hear. It doesn't matter how often Rafa says it: the days keep slipping away from them, one after the next, and the next, and the next.

The night before Rafa leaves for college - _leaves_ \- there's a bonfire out in the fields out of town, nearly their whole class sitting in a circle of tremulous firelight. Some of them are drinking and some of them passing around a questionable smoke, but Novak's content to sit close to the fire with his shoulder pressed up against Rafa's, talking or listening to the friends that drift towards and away from them: Ana, Fernando, Feli, Maria, Viktor. It's a clear night, stars bright and brittle through the smoky haze with the first faint suggestion of fall in the air, and when they say their goodbyes and head back to the bike Rafa commandeers Novak's jacket and refuses to relinquish it.

-

Lingering outside Rafa's house in a circle of orange streetlight, Rafa puts a hand on the bike like he's gentling a beloved animal. "I'm actually going to miss her," he says, thumbing the edge of her glossy handlebars.

"Her," Novak says, sitting back in the seat. "Just her?"

"Other things too, maybe," Rafa admits.

One last kiss - one last - last one this time, really. There are lights on inside the house because Rafa confessed earlier that he hadn't even finished packing, and Novak doesn't want to tempt the wrath of Toni one too many times this summer. He makes Rafa promise to call when he gets to college, and promises the same thing himself.

"Wait," Novak says, when Rafa goes up to the house at last. Rafa turns. "You're stealing my jacket."

Rafa crooks a lopsided grin. "You'll have to come get it, won't you."

The door shuts behind him and Novak laughs, his heart big and tight, in love. The bike hums beneath him. It's a beautiful night.


End file.
